4 ms·

I guess you haven't been reading the room lately. In the modern retelling, the explorers that found the "New World" produced only net negatives and we'd have be

I guess you haven't been reading the room lately. In the modern retelling, the explorers that found the "New World" produced only net negatives and we'd have been all much better off had they stayed in western europe.

darknavi 5y ago
> In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
taylorlapeyre 5y ago
Very few make or believe that argument. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wishing that things had gone a little better than they did at the time. We can still believe in a more humane world while still greatly appreciating the benefits that modern society has given us.
krastanov 5y ago
This is nonsense. I am sympathetic to even the most obnoxiously leftist descriptions of the exploration of the New World, but even then, acknowledging that the large scale conquest of the Americas involved multiple genocides is not in conflict with acknowledging that some of the explorers that found new lands (not only the Americas) were brave visionaries. Why is it so difficult to just accept that a single person can have both inspiration qualities that we should try to emulate and also grave moral failings we should learn from? No one is perfect and hardly anyone is purely evil either.
ehsankia 5y ago
You can explore and discover new worlds without raping, killing and exploiting the new people you find. The problem wasn't the exploration, and there's nothing inherent about exploration that forces you to murder others.
irjustin 5y ago
I find these 'what-ifs' to be only thought-exercises. You'll never truly know if the world is in fact a better place because there's no A/B test, no re-do. In the end humans are naturally curious, expansionist, greedy (to varying degrees). We've always been this way and so it's only natural for us to continue. We've been described as a virus before, feels relatively accurate esp if we start planet and system hopping.

darknavi 5y ago

> In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

taylorlapeyre 5y ago

Very few make or believe that argument. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wishing that things had gone a little better than they did at the time. We can still believe in a more humane world while still greatly appreciating the benefits that modern society has given us.

krastanov 5y ago

This is nonsense. I am sympathetic to even the most obnoxiously leftist descriptions of the exploration of the New World, but even then, acknowledging that the large scale conquest of the Americas involved multiple genocides is not in conflict with acknowledging that some of the explorers that found new lands (not only the Americas) were brave visionaries. Why is it so difficult to just accept that a single person can have both inspiration qualities that we should try to emulate and also grave moral failings we should learn from? No one is perfect and hardly anyone is purely evil either.

ehsankia 5y ago

You can explore and discover new worlds without raping, killing and exploiting the new people you find. The problem wasn't the exploration, and there's nothing inherent about exploration that forces you to murder others.

irjustin 5y ago

I find these 'what-ifs' to be only thought-exercises. You'll never truly know if the world is in fact a better place because there's no A/B test, no re-do. In the end humans are naturally curious, expansionist, greedy (to varying degrees). We've always been this way and so it's only natural for us to continue. We've been described as a virus before, feels relatively accurate esp if we start planet and system hopping.